Entanet customers relying on the firm's Stepney Green exchange are struggling without access today - thanks to thieves who got in over the weekend.
Entanet engineers had to wait for police clearance before they could get inside and see what damage had been done, and what kit had been pinched.
The company sent us the following …

business before people

Don't they?

I admit, I've only ever needed to deal with the police (as a reportee) a couple of times in my life (one burglary, one car break-in), but the people I dealt with certainly "give a rat's ass" - in the sense that the itemised what was stolen and gave me a crime reference number, that is.

In both (separate) cases, I was told that they know the group that did it, but they would never be to pin it on them. And while I won't go in to the details, I agreed with them. I would have loved some justice, but for the (insured) <£100 stolen each time, it wouldn't have been worth their effort, knowing almost certainly that the goods would have been fenced, stashed, or dumped already.

*laughs*

People who like horses

Mobile people may have done it, in which case the police say they can do nothing. Or put it another way, the police always blame the mobile horse folks so that they don't need to actually catch anyone.

Attention grabbing

I found that a good tactic was to interrupt the disinterested policeman at the end of the telephone with "Oh - I think there's someone upstairs. I'm going up there now with a kitchen knife" and put the phone down. Police were at my front door in two minutes.

@AC 15:50

Well, they are too busy getting injured at riots^z^^z protest marches (where they get criticised if they try to defend themselves/the public/an area by people claiming they are too heavy handed). They have all had their batons removed and replaced by feathers to apprehend criminals.

If its a riot in the street with public property being damaged, the police are too heavy handed.

No

OK

"In the early hours of Monday 17th Jan, we advised Entanet customers via our Network Operations Centre (noc.enta.net), twitter and email subscriptions that we had lost connectivity to stepneygreen.core.enta.net."

Which, of course, assumes the customer has some method for accessing all these Internet based facilities when their entanet connection is down..

hmmmmm

And I thought...

...something good had happened when you used the term "burglarised." I thought it was new jargon that perhaps meant the systems had been upgraded but one assumes that the writer is using some sloppy words invented in those united states.

@Pirate Peter

As a Network Rail signalling engineer can I just add that this is the bane of my very existence.

However it does provide me with some mirth when the halfwits (almost always in a relatively new, metallic painted, unmarked Ford Transit) come out in the dark, armed with a Stihl saw, cut the cable and drag it off into the darkness.

Then a call comes in from the Signalbox to say some random telecoms assets have dissapeared off the grid. The stupid twits nicked the Fibre Optic cable. Serves 'em right! Should be interesting when they burn the insulation off at the scrap yard and find the whole things melts.

Burglarised

I too used to laugh when Americans used "burglarise", but oddly enough, it seems "burglarise" is more correct.

The common UK English verb "burgle" is a back-formation based on the incorrect assumption that the "-ar" ending of "burglar" is just a funny way of spelling "-er". The back-formation dates from 1872, so I suppose it's time to accept it.

The Middle English word was "burgulator", which I think sounds much more impressive. On this basis, the verb should be "burgulate", or perhaps "burgulatorise".

Stolen to order

@ Stolen to order

To Infinity, and beyond!

If the 'harassment' I've had to suffer from BT pushing their new fibre optic services onto me by phone, letter and email is anything to go by, whilst making absurd claims* about how it will improve my Internet experience, I wouldn't rule them out for wooden-clogging other ISP's kit like common East-End gangster thugs. Albeit in smart blue boiler suits.

* Great big whoppers of lies told by trained chimpanzees taught to pronounce words they don't actually understand. Not that there's anything wrong with a well taut BT chimpanzee, especially if there's an overhanging branch at the other end of the rope.